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The Center Square: Budget report indicates added pressures to offset revenue gains
Nearly six months into the fiscal year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office says there is approximately $1 billion in budget pressures that will offset revenue gains.
In a recent Economic and Fiscal Policy report, the governor’s office said the pressures include potential spending related to asylum seekers. Illinois has spent more than half a billion dollars to help care for the migrant arrivals since last August. The funds have gone towards shelter and health care services.
Chicago Tribune: City has lost all communication about migrant drop offs since new penalties, official says
Migrants are no longer being dropped off at the city’s landing zone on buses from the southern border, causing people to wander with no direction looking for shelter, according to an aide to Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Cristina Pacione-Zayas, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, said the lack of communication is directly correlated with the city’s harsher penalties for bus owners whose vehicles violate rules to rein in chaotic bus arrivals from the southern border. She suspects bus companies are finding other ways to get migrants into the city. As of Saturday, more than 25,900 migrants had arrived in Chicago since August 2022, according to city records.
Chicago Sun-Times: Feds close corruption case against Ed Burke by telling jurors his words on secret recordings are ‘absolutely devastating’
The racketeering case against the longest-serving City Council member in Chicago history should soon be in the hands of federal jurors after a prosecutor insisted Friday that secretly recorded comments by Edward M. Burke are “absolutely devastating to him.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker said the words of the former 14th Ward alderperson are more significant than any testimony jurors would have heard if prosecutors called FBI mole Danny Solis to the witness stand.
NBC Chicago: New paid leave law begins in Illinois in 2024, but what about Chicago and Cook County?
Under a new law in 2024, nearly all workers in the state of Illinois will officially be guaranteed at least one week of paid leave, but things are different for those who live in Chicago and Cook County.
Ordinances in Cook County and Chicago already require employers to offer paid sick leave, and workers in those locations will continue to be covered by the existing laws rather than the new bill.
Chicago Tribune: Evictions in Cook County have caught up to pre-pandemic levels. The lack of affordable housing and rising costs are to blame, experts say
The TV was turned to the news as the smell of bacon wafted from the kitchen after the sheriff’s police entered Michael Hallmon’s South Shore apartment on a chilly November morning.
Inside the two-bedroom apartment sat a pile of clothes and shoes, along with a stack of bikes and a lawn chair made up as a bed. A computer monitor on a cluttered desk had a Microsoft Teams chat pulled up, and the kitchen counter was full of groceries. A greasy pan sat on the stove.
Daily Herald: McHenry County Board to decide whether to put tax hike on ballot
McHenry County voters could decide in March whether to hike the county’s sale tax to change how local mental health services are funded.
The county board is expected to vote Tuesday on placing a referendum on the March 19 primary ballot that, if approved, would allow a 0.25% retail sales tax increase. The proposed tax hike would fund the McHenry County Mental Health Board, shifting away from a property tax.